Not sure if anyone's addressed this before, but I'm wondering if anyone has discovered the logic that our custom robots use when selecting which weapons to utilize in combat.

The other day, I was spent an obscene amount of resources trying to create the ultimate killing machine to accompany me in the commonwealth.

Robobrain head(mesmetron attack)

shoulder mounted cluster bombs and smoke grenades

gatlin laser right arm

stealth blade right arm

Armored up with the highest level of protection plus buffs with energy/melee damage

When I brought him to battle, we came across a handful of rouge robots, plus raiders... perfect resting scenario, right? Well, come to find out, he only fired his shoulder cluster bombs and the mesmetron attack. He might have fired the smoke a couple of times... but he never once fired the gatlin laser, and when enemies meleed him, he was melee attacking with the gatlin right arm instead of the stealth blade, still didn't actually fire the weapon. He was trying to attack some raiders inside of a building with his cluster bombs, which was a terrible decision. I thought that was what the laser was for! He ended up taking a pretty long time trying to kill everyone with his mesmetron attack and cluster bombs.. I ended up killing half of them myself because I was getting bored watching him attempt to hit everyone with his mesmetron attack and shoot cluster bombs against walls. Needless to say, test run went so bad that I ended up reloading a previous save so I could get back those resources...

Has anyone figured out the logic for their decision making for which weapons they use? I assumed it wouldn't go as smoothly as I envisioned because I gave him a lot of weapons to choose from. I figured he'd at least be as good as my Ada with Assaultron laser head, lightning gun, and shock assaultron claw. She actually works perfectly, but I guess throwing in shoulder launchers threw it off...

Yeah, I came to that conclusion as well... I guess I just wanted to figure out their actual decision making process, so I could optimize their damage potential. lol. My most reliable bots have just 2 weapons, and the assaultron laser head. I love that thing!

Mine shoots the two gatlings at the same time, and sometimes it charges the head laser for a kill. But when they are using 1 attack they don't seem to be using the other. So if you give them too many different weapons they will use 1 of each kind each time, but not all at once. I haven't fully tested with further configurations, two gatlings with energy buff armor seems to be enough for me. My robot is not even using sentry torsos but when I crafted a sentry melee with cluster bombs, he just missed all his attacks while also being unable to get close enough to the enemy and died.

My recipe: Robobrain treads, sentry torso, assaultron arms. Mini nukes on each shoulder, explosive minigun on one side, missile launcher on the other. Assaultron laser head with Gorgon upgrade. All armors are highest possible or best you can get with +carry weight modifiers. (I have rank 1 of Inspirational (Is that the name?) so that I don't take damage from Mini Nuke's, errrr, mini nukes). Lemme tell you, that little [censored] slaughters everything. At medium range, it's nukes and the explosive minigun. In close quarters combat, it's the laser and the missile launcher. I guess my 'bot isn't having the same AI problem yours is.

Yeah, I guess it's due to the fact that I equipped him with a stealth blade. Maybe that melee weapon just completely screwed up the decision making for my robot. I was just blown away though... he was melee pummeling the sh** outta everyone with his gatling gun, and didn't even swing with his other arm that had his actual melee weapon! Then switches up to cluster bombs at melee range... I guess I'll just do 2 gatlings instead and see how it turns out. And Mesmetron was not worth it at all, IMO...

Why would anyone use anything less then a laser Gatling on both hands? Ada has a Mr Handy body she has 3 blades, and shocks when they get near her. Both hands have Laser Gatling. She can down anything without my help. Sometimes i make her stay put so i can sneak around and lop some heads off. I play on very hard.

All units in this game are right handed, and will melee with their right hand at the start of any chain, which gets reset by any type of retaliation, so don't put the melee weapon on the left hand, the ranged weapon does not mattr which hand, but the robots always prefer their right for melee.

Detecting what they can and can't hit with mortars is based on direct line of sight, meaning they will target an enemy under a roof before one that is behind a wall, this goes for all weapons, the mortars simply have the most abnormal trajectory.

Laser gatlings and miniguns have a ramp up, and a robot in melee combat will rarely spend enough time not hitting people to use them.

Secondary weapons like mortars, the eye laser, and mesmetron attack have priority over all other attacks, and will interrupt fire from ramp up weapons to be used.

So the tips, for your robot to function better

Remove mesmetronic attack/ or swap gatling laser for a non ramp up weapon

Put the melee weapon on the right hand, and the ranged weapon on the left

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for when I posted the topic. I never thought about the 'handedness' of the robot. I'll give that a try... And I was thinking of getting rid of mesmetron attack anyway because it wasn't as effective as I hoped(after seeing it in action).